“My mom’s mother passed away when she was a teenager and we didn’t know her father at all, so my grandparents on my dad’s side were the whole deal,” Jenny Gammon tells me as we sit inside Julien’s Bakery in The Hydrostone. Surrounded by the scent of baking bread, we’re drinking coffee and eating pastries. It’s a comfortable and warm space to tell the story of a life lost on a freezing cold Thursday in November 2015.
Gammon’s grandmother Madeline was raised in East Quinan, a small, rural Acadian community located just outside of Yarmouth. Madeline’s mother died shortly after giving birth to a boy when Madeline was just three years old. Afterwards, Madeline and her remaining siblings were separated and sent to live with various relatives.
“It was rough for all of them, but she eventually ended up living with her father again, which was very unusual for the time. In fact, all of the brothers and sisters moved back in and lived under the same roof with their father again,” Gammon says.
As a teenager, Madeline’s older sister married and moved to Dartmouth, where she found herself terribly homesick. She wrote to Madeline and begged her to visit. Madeline agreed, with the intention of staying a few months. She stayed for years.
“She got a job at the Dartmouth Rope Works factory and that’s around the time she met my grandfather,” says Gammon.
Losing a leg in a hunting accident at the age of 17 meant Kenneth Gammon, Gammon’s grandfather, was ineligible to go to war. With many of Dartmouth’s young men away overseas, Kenneth was introduced by mutual friends to Madeline.
“My grandfather was very reserved, quiet and stoic, and my grandmother was a spitfire,” Gammon says, laughing. “She was so intense, so stubborn and fierce, and you can imagine how that combination could just light up.”
After purchasing a property in the heart of Dartmouth’s north end, Gammon’s grandfather built a small house from the ground up.
“My grandfather built that house but my grandmother made their life,” Gammon says. “It was homemade. It was a homemade life. There wasn’t a time that went by without us knowing, and I mean really knowing, that my grandmother loved us.”
Food played a huge role in the way Madeline expressed love to her family.
“My food memories of her run deep. My childhood with her was a constant sensory overload. We would have dinner at my grandparents’ house every Sunday, and my grandmother would single-handedly put on these huge feasts: turkey dinner, ham dinner, roast beef, countless bowls of vegetables,” says Gammon. “After dinner, when everyone was full, she’d disappear into the back porch and come back with multiple pies or cakes. There’s a running joke in our family to this day that when you have a pie, you only cut it into quarters. We still call that the Nanny Cut.”
When Gammon was a teenager, her grandfather died.
“After that my grandmother was still active, you know, things like political canvassing and walking. She loved to walk and she walked fast,” Gammon tells me. “She was a busy lady, but despite that, I think after her husband died, she kind of cocooned into herself.”
As years went on, signs of Alzheimer’s began to rear their ugly heads. Things like forgetfulness, and mixing up the names of people she’d known for years, became increasingly common. Her children worked hard to keep Madeline in the family home as long as possible but a year before she died, a decision was made that Madeline would move into St. Vincent’s Nursing Home in Halifax.
“Up until that point, she was adamant that she wanted to be in her own home, but the irony is, when she finally moved into the nursing home, she just opened up,” Gammon says. “I think she really loved the social environment and maybe didn’t realize she’d been missing out on that for a long time since her children and grandchildren had all grown up”.
Madeline died of heart failure on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015.
I ask Gammon what legacy Madeline left her.
“Every Sunday, we would all go over to her house and everything she did, everything she cooked, everything she made, was for us. It made her so happy to give us homemade things, and homemade things are almost never perfect, but her love and her passion and her commitment to our family made them perfect to me.”
Madeline Gammon’s War Cake
Ingredients:
2 cups hot water
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. shortening
15 ounces raisins
3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
Directions:
In a medium-large pot, bring hot water, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ginger, salt, shortening and raisins to a boil. Boil five minutes, then remove from heat and cool for several hours.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Add flour and baking soda to cooled brown sugar mixture. Mix well to combine and pour into a 9x13 oven-proof baking dish.
Bake cake for one hour. Remove from oven and cool on rack.
Serving suggestion: try with slices of cheddar cheese on the side.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/thenovascotian/1534254-a-treasured-cake-recipe-that-doesn’t-call-for-perfection